Kukla's Korner Hockey

With 51 points, the Jets can finish with no more than 53 by winning their final game. It means the teams they’re chasing – the eighth-place Ottawa Senators and the seventh-place New York Rangers – can clinch a playoff spot with a single win in any of their remaining games. Despite earning just a single point in the shootout loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, the New York Islanders locked down the sixth playoff spot in the Eastern Conference when Winnipeg lost.

So things are dire for the Jets, who were playing for the second time in two nights, and running mostly on adrenaline, knowing the stakes were so high. But the Capitals knew that, too.

It was the last time the two teams met as Southeast Division rivals and Washington can thank the Jets, in many ways, for saving their season. It was back in the third week of March when the Capitals, languishing in 14th place in the East, visited Winnipeg and swept the Jets in two one-sided games, outscoring them by a 10-1 margin.